The story of Inanna is the textbook example of the Descent into the Underworld – literally so in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Beyond having an active female protagonist, it could also potentially provide us with some truly innovative game mechanic hooks – not bad for a story written before the Old Testament!

The Story in a Nutshell

Inanna's story has come down to us in a somewhat confusing form. The fragments we have indicate she descended to the Underworld to partake in funeral rights for a deceased god, but the identity of the god conflicts with other accounts of the Mesopotamian pantheon.

The general pattern of the Descent into the Underworld is similar to the journeys of other heroines and heroes – Isis and Horus, Orpheus and Eurydice, Izanami and Izanagi. The main difference with the other variants is that the other pairs are all lovers. Inanna appears to be attending the funeral rites for the husband of the goddess of the underworld, Ereshkigal.

This means we have some opportunities to subvert the usual trope of descending to the Underworld to rescue the husband/wife. Does Inanna descend to comfort the goddess of Death? Did she have a fling with Ereshkigal's husband? Is that why he's dead?

As Inanna moves down the underworld, she passes through seven gates. At each gate, Ereshkigal's servants strip her of her magical items and clothing:

"A turban, a wig, a lapis lazuli necklace, beads upon her breast, the 'pala dress' (the ladyship garment), mascara, pectoral, a golden ring on her hand, and she held a lapis lazuli measuring rod."

Inanna is successively stripped of her power until she arrives before Ereshkigal and the seven judges of the Underworld. They pass the sentence of death upon her, and the goddess' corpse is hung upon a hook.

As Inanna's corpse lies in the Underworld, the sky god Enki works to save her while her husband Dumuzi throws a party, usurps her throne, and molests her slave girls. Enki's servants are able to retrieve Inanna's corpse and revive it after three days. Inanna has escaped, but Ereshkigal demands a substitute to take her place. Inanna offers her unfaithful, usurping husband and he is dragged down into the Underworld for his crimes.

The Archetypes

The story of Inanna offers great raw material for our Archetypal female-positive story. The Descent/Resurrection motif is common enough that players will be able to connect with it (instead of say, a potentially alienating Grrl Power plot).

This is a conflict between two goddesses, each powerful in their own domain. While Inanna is stripped of her magical items (agency), it is as an equal. She is not demeaned for being a woman, but for intruding into the realm of another goddess. This contrasts nicely with the disempowerment of Princess Peach/Princess Zelda/Princess Etc.

The idea of being progressively stripped of power also offers up intriguing game mechanic hooks. Our main character starts with all of the available powers/abilities/equipment, but must sacrifice them to defeat each level boss and move forward. Think of it as an inverse Mega Man or Metroid. Instead of gaining items and equipment to deal with increasingly powerful enemies, the player's loss of items naturally ramps up gameplay difficulty.

This could also work around player choice. Maybe you get to choose what armor/weapons to sacrifice to move to the next level, and the stages are designed with multiple paths based on the seven powers. Sacrificing the Double Jump closes off one path, but you can still take a path that requires the Bombs. Each stage requires more ingenuity and exploration to navigate (a naturally escalating skill curve).

After the death/resurrection scenes, you journey back out of the underworld, but this time with all of your powers restored - allowing the player to explore the missed paths. Naturally, each path would be littered with unique collectables and NPC conversations.

We can also avoid the issue that comes up in a fair amount of Grrl Power media – the demonization of men. While we have Dumuzi (the unfaithful husband) as a stand-in for the negative male, we also have Enki as a positive, helpful Light Father figure. The game revolves around a conflict between two powerful women, but it can also explore the negative and positive aspects of male Archetypes.

Of course, there's no reason why the story has to take place in a Sumerian context with gods and goddesses. The important thing is the Archetypal plot and the unique gameplay possibilities of Inanna's story.

Next time, we'll be looking at a conflict between a woman and a goddess: Anat and Paghat.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

"For when a heart insists on its destiny, resisting the general blandishment, then the agony is great; so too the danger." - Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces

Before diving into the next section, let's take a moment to orient ourselves. We said many things in the previous sections, but if you get nothing else out of it, understand this:

1). Tropes are rationalizations of Archetypes.
2). Archetypes are born from the Unconscious.

3). You can't fix the Unconscious by yelling at it.

If Ms. Sarkesian is correct, the Damsel in Distress is a sexist Trope used by sexist game creators. In her formulation, the answer is strong female characters who function as something other than passive objects (and the complete suppression of the Anima Archetype).

If I am correct, the Damsel in Distress is a Trope-ified version of the Anima and one of the foundational images of the human Unconscious. In this formulation, no amount of Grrl Power characters will ever suppress her.

But I am not arguing for wholesale acceptance of the Tropeified Damsel, or that women have no place in stories beyond passive objects. I am arguing that unless we make female characters in line with Archetypal principles, we will end up with unsatisfying, unconvincing results. No matter how much we strive to create positive female characters, our subconscious minds will reject them if they are simply Men with Tits.

To that end, we'll be looking at some examples of female characters from ancient mythology that should be more in line with Archetypal figures than 100-pound kung-fu hackers with perfect hair and spectacular tits. We'll look at both the original stories and how they might translate into compelling game mechanics.

Now, take all of the following examples with grains of the saltiest salt - I've never made a video game or published a story. These ideas will not survive contact with reality as-is, but we're more concerned with direction than detail at this point. And I firmly believe that this is a better direction for women's representation than stomping on the Damsel with an iron heel.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Note the wheels turning. EPH isn't gonna cut it. 4/6 isn't gonna cut it. The best we can do is reduce Puppy slots by one (not to one, mind you - from 5 of 5 to 4 of 5). We're going to have to drink some bitter medicine to fight this infection.

Slowly, the unthinkable becomes thinkable. Negative votes. Blacklists. Juries. We have accepted that the Hugos will never again exist in their previous form. We can only try to decide what new form it will be.

But the fickle public is like water - grasp too hard, and it will slip through your fingers. No one is obligated to participate in the Hugos. The more they feel herded and controlled, the less likely they will pay for the privilege. It is far from certain we will be the ones deciding.

No Award is cheers and applause for an evening, and shame for a year. It is more dissent, more allies-turned-enemies. The longer this fight draws out, the less a victory that feels like victory seems possible.

Unsettled, the realization finally sinks in: this will not be over by Christmas. This will not be over next year. Our victory is not preordained. We will lose things - worse, we will have to make sacrifices,

You'd think GRRM of all people would realize how often the self-declared "good guys" lose.

"Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations.” – TVTropes.com (retrieved 11/09/15)

We looked at the above definition briefly in the first post, but I want to revisit it. This definition is useful because it identifies two things that may not be immediately obvious about Tropes:

1). Tropes are consciously identified and chosen by writers.

2). Tropes are useful to writers because audiences already relate to them.

Writers do not intentionally create Tropes, but they do intentionally choose to use them. Tropes have value because they already exist - because audiences are familiar with them and won't have to think about them. The more universally comprehensible and appealing a Trope is, the more value it has for writers.

The distinction between Trope and Archetype is this: Tropes are consciously chosen for their palatability to mass audiences. Archetypes are timeless and emerge from the Subconscious in the minds of generation after generation of humans. Tropes are market-tested and just a bit cynical. Writers use Tropes either because "it's what people want" or because "it's what people understand."

In a sense, Tropes are rationalized Archetypes. The Kick-Ass Action Grrl has similarities with Kali and other blood-thirsty female deities of war and destruction. But the Grrl Power variant is an overtly rationalized version of the goddess of Destruction, not a picture from the subconscious.

Jung delineates something very similar to the process of writing through Tropes and the process of writing from Archetypes in describing the difference between "fantasy" and "active imagination":

"A fantasy is more or less your own invention, and remains on the surface of personal things and conscious expectations. But active imagination...means that the images have a life of their own and that the symbolic events develop according to their own logic – that is, of course, if your conscious reason does not interfere."

A Trope fulfills the conscious expectations of the author and audience – there shalt be a main character, and lo that main character shalt have a love interest. Some audiences expect their heroes to be brawny men of action and some expect their heroines to beat up brawny men of action. There is no evil in this, it simply proceeds from taste, fashion, and convention. It conforms to our conscious expectations.

Which is not to say that Tropes appear ex nihilo. These mass market images must come from somewhere before they are rationalized. My suspicion is that every entry on TVTropes.com can be traced back to some aspect of Jung's Archetypes or Campbell's Hero's Journey.

Nintendo (and the game industry in general) turned the Archetypal Anima into the Damsel Trope, making her rescue the goal of game after game after game. This is the rationalization of an Archetypal pattern, which is why it provided an effective hook in the days when game stories consisted of a few scant lines of text.

But to return to an earlier point, to claim that the Trope is the Archetype is to claim that the Hamburger is the Cow. The Archetype has a life of its own, and will not be any more repressed by cries of 'misogyny' any more than a Republican Senator's urges will be repressed in a public men's room. Men will want to rescue Princesses; not because women are property, but because their soul is a woman in need of freedom.

We can do better than "suppress the Anima" and we can do better than "increase the percentage of female protagonists." Next time, we'll set the groundwork for what that means.

Was nominating Space Raptor Butt Invasion a mistake? There are countless pundits beating this drum, but I would be remiss not to shout out this blogger who was kind enough to mention my "Killing Vox Day" series.

First, notice that most Kickers are shifting the narrative from "Space Raptor Butt Invasion" to "Chuck Tingle." This is telling. They are not okay with "Space Raptor Butt Invasion" winning a Hugo, but they just might be okay with a vote for "Chuck Tingle."

Second, this illustrates that the disagreement between the Rabids and the Kickers extends to the definition of victory and failure. In the mind of the Kickers, failure is defined as looking ridiculous:

"[The Puppies are] the ones who are going to look ridiculous, and if it’s a victory for gay space dinosaur erotica as well then that’s OK too."

Much like the noble failures of the Republican Primary, 'looking respectable' and 'victory' are so closely linked in their minds they cannot conceive of risking negative press to achieve an objective. The idea of strategically courting hate goes against their instincts, hard.

So for the Kickers, the ultimate question is who will be more embarrassed. While the presence of SRBI on the ballot is embarrassing to the Kickers/PTB, they still have hope that Dr. Tingle might make things even more embarrassing for Vox.

As such, the only way they will accept SRBI as a loss, is if they feel more embarrassed than they perceive the Puppies as being embarrassed. Hence the shift from talking about SRBI to talking about Chuck Tingle.

There's a fascinating rabbit trail about who Dr. Tingle is trying to help. Kickers perceive him as a Kicker and Rabids perceive him as a Rabid, but so far he mostly seems to be working towards his own purposes. The good doctor is making a tidy sum off of this controversy, so I assume his personal interests lean towards drawing out the fight as long as possible.

That said - does extending a conflict favor the State forces or the insurgents in 4GW? If the good doctor is a Kicker, he should reconsider drawing the conflict out.

Third, we've already discussed Vox's goals and methods, and we're not going to regurgitate them here. Let us simply reflect that public opinion is beneath Mole Person Invasion on the list of things Vox is concerned about.

One last thing. Scalzi accused the Rabids of 'jumping in front of the parade.' Which is exactly what the Kickers are doing and will do vis-a-vis SRBI/Chuck Tingle.

Let's get to the falsifiable predictions:

-The Kickers will continue to focus on Chuck Tingle as "embarrassing" for Vox (look for that word in particular, but also 'ridiculous,' 'silly,' etc.)

-Continued discussion of SRBI will ultimately benefit Vox (how much time have you spent thinking about the other nominees in any category? How much time have you spent thinking about other nominees that are not controversial? I seriously want to know; all I can think about is SRBI)

-Space Raptor Butt Invasion will win a Hugo. Both sides will claim it as a victory. Framing SRBI's nomination as about love winning over hate was a master stroke by Dr. Tingle.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

To "flip the script" is to take an existing story/franchise with a male hero and a female Damsel and switch their roles. The male character becomes a passive Animus and the female Damsel becomes an active Heroine.

However, this tactic runs the risk of "men with tits" syndrome. Swapping the Mario and the Princess Peach often results in female protagonists that are male in everything but appearance. They act like men, they talk like men, they dress in short skirts and bodices. What is the point of a female protagonist that is essentially a man?

This sort of character is also problematic in that they are still intended as a stand-in for male players. Why else would game makers avoid showing their female protagonists kissing (or indeed, fucking) men?

And while this problem is something feminists love to point out, it also illustrates something that many feminists are not comfortable with: men and women act differently. Some of this is cultural, some of this is practical, and some of it may indeed be biological. The question is not whether or not this is fair, but when we complain about female characters with no discernibly female characteristics (save tits), we acknowledge the difference.

It's also why simply flipping the script and slapping tits on a male character fails psychologically. If only unconsciously, we know there is a difference between how men behave and how women behave. We want our female protagonists to act like women.

Now, there is a difference between saying female protagonists should act like women and that game mechanics should reflect this and saying that female characters should always be passive objects. The Heroine is a different creature from the Anima. She is the one on the quest to liberate the soul, not the soul to be liberated. But creating active female characters starts with creating female characters, not with stapling female bodies onto male characters.

Later on in the series we will look at some ideas for games that are both psychologically satisfying and provide roles for women beyond passive Damsel/Riot Grrrl/Man with Tits.

But first, I want to delve further into what defines a Trope, and why that definition is the hamburger instead of the cow. Look for it next time.

Monday, May 9, 2016

You guys do realize that I'm a Sad Puppy and that this is a war game, right? You have seen that I've said this multiple times, right? Looks like Kickers aren't the only ones with reading comprehension and pattern recognition problems.

Today, we're going to outline a strategy that no one will like and will never be implemented. You may still find it useful as an exercise in applied 4GW.

The Capitulate and Contain strategy is based off of two ideas:

1). As long as the Puppies are focused on the Hugos, the Puppies are focused on the Hugos

Other awards/conventions have an ever-narrowing window of opportunity to enact anti-Puppy policies (ie, policies to prevent Puppy-like shenanigans) before the Hugos fall and the Rabids turn their eyes elsewhere.

It's tempting to move all available resources to counter the Puppy attack on the Hugos, but so far, this has done nothing. It's time to start putting out feelers to other Conventions/Awards and setting up a fallback position. The only thing worse than losing the Hugos would be losing the next award/convention.

2). 4GW entities do best when they never have to play defensePart of the problem with fighting a 4GW opponent is that non-state actors (terrorists, guerrillas) have no territory to defend - at least, nothing on the scale of an enemy nation. Bombing a terrorist training camp does little to destroy their will to fight or ability to carry out operations (compared to bombing factories or refineries in a conventional war). A 4GW entity can be everywhere and nowhere, making them almost impossible to exterminate.

But what if we give the enemy territory? Per Lind, 4GW entities have so far worked best when they hollow out a traditional State and wear it like a skin ("would you govern me? I'd govern me). Allowing the Puppies to take over the Hugos and forcing them to defend territory could counter-intuitively sap their strength.

Here's a rough sketch:

1). Maintain token resistance while infiltrating other Cons/Awards.

2). Document 'scary' statements/actions by Pups to frighten other Cons/Awards into compliance.

3). If and when the Rabids take over, destroy as much of the Hugo's/WorldCon's infrastructure as possible (Scorched Earth).

4). Get all known Puppies/WorldCon 2017 attendees blacklisted from as much of fandom as possible (Capitulate and Contain).

The end game is to 'out' as many Puppies as possible and to prevent them from getting footholds in other Awards/Cons. "Go back to the Hugos."

Sure, losing the Hugos would sting, but it's looking increasingly like that's going to happen anyway. Better to get something out of failure than to simply fail. And the Puppening is about more than the Hugos.

Here's why it will never happen:

1). The PTB at the Hugos will self-immolate before considering the possibility of defeat/voluntarily losing their status as the PTB at the Hugos.

2). As noted by myself and a few commentators here, the Kickers lack the necessary discipline to pull something like this off.

3). I don't know the PTB at other Awards/Cons, but I assume they have a similar lack of self-awareness/discipline.

In our series of mental exercises, this one is the most theoretical. It will never happen with the current players - but then, that's the fun of war games, isn't it? "How would you stop the Rabids" is a more productive question than "what will those rascals do next?"

Friday, May 6, 2016

Almost every other rule change proposal other than E Pluribus Hugo I've seen leads to a situation similar to EPH. The rule changes will not be enough to squeeze the Rabids out, leading to a Temporary Cease-Fire or Balkanization.

Banning people based on "griefer" nominations will transform behind-the-scenes Hugo manipulation into open control. But that doesn't really matter.

The average Sci-Fi reader knows very little about the Hugos (part of why $2,000 could buy you a Hugo before the Puppies). Before PuppyGate, I couldn't have told you the difference between a Hugo, a Nebula, and a Newbery. It's just something on the cover that makes your eye linger another second.

Turning the Hugos into an openly controlled award will do nothing to undermine its value to the controllers. The average person's eye will linger for the extra second. The Affirmative Action Crew will get their diversity winners (less than you may expect, judging by how white last year's winners were).

If think about it, the only way to prevent people from nominating the "wrong" books is to ban people who nominate the "wrong" books. Yes, it will reduce the Hugos to a sham, but a truly open and democratic voting system is not what everyone wants. And much of the core fanbase will go along with it, in the same way they went along with No Award/

In a way, the Puppy Revolt could end up making things easier on the Controllers, because it gives them an excuse to seize control under the cover of protecting everyone from the Puppies. Not that this will stop the slow death of traditional publishing, but whatever.

Now, Vox wants us to believe he can use the proposed PermaBan rule against the Kickers. That remains to be seen, but the man has an excellent track record on these things.

I'm torn on whether or not Vox can pull that off. My gut tells me that this is at least partially a bluff, but I have no evidence and it runs counter to Vox's pattern of saying what he will do and then doing it. But the gut will say what it says, regardless of reason.

Predictions Time:

-The Powers That Be will move forward with PermaBanning, and will implement it if they think they can get away with it.

-If PermaBanning is implemented, the Hugo base will go along with it.

-If Vox can flip PermaBanning on the PTB, I will give my gut a very stern talking-to.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Before we continue, please remember that this is just a war game. I'm really pushing for Peace, Love, and Understanding.

That said, the non-Peace and Love strategies are more fun to discuss. Let's start with E Pluribus Hugo.

EPH seems like a safe bet on the surface. It would likely reduce the Puppy presence from 4-5 nominations to, oh let's say 2-3. By preventing stacked nominations, you can prevent situations like 2015 & 2016 and the presence of Noah Ward.

It's a conventional strategy that offers a decent risk/reward ratio. Sure, the Puppies may get a few slots, but that only lasts as long as they can maintain interest, right? A potentially permanent Puppy presence is a profound price to pay, but less than the cost of year after year of Noah.

But remember, a permanent slot also means a permanent presence. As the Puppies are fond of saying, "Diversity + Proximity = War." And while we might modify the Sum of that equation to "Conflict," the Rabids' preferred form of Conflict is War.

(Tangent - Conflict can be a good thing when the Thesis and Anti-Thesis lead to a Synthesis, but that's just the old Hegelian talking)

While the Rabid Puppies in their current form may peter out and die eventually, that will not end the presence of conservatives in Sci-Fi. We're in the middle of a wider culture war and an indie publishing boom, guys. EPH guarantees further presence and further conflict.

There are basically three scenarios here:

A. Stabilization - The Puppies are mollified with a permanent nomination slot. Tempers cool, and both sides go back to quietly loathing each other and settling things via ballot. Perhaps, in time, people are able to vote for quality/their honest favorites instead of "sending a message."

B. Temporary Cease-Fire - Things cool down initially, but extended contact between Puppies and Kickers leads to greater conflict. The parties involved find new ways to game the system and we end up in the same scenario as now.

C. Balkanization - Things cool down, but extended contact leads to renewed conflict. Neither side is able to game the system and gain an advantage. WorldCon splits into feuding, loathing factions to the point where it is no longer any fun to attend. The Hugos collapse into a multitude of competing Cons/Awards.

As a Sad, scenario A is very appealing to me, but may be unpalatable to Puppy Kickers and Rabids. At any rate, without significant effort on the part of the Kickers to de-escalate, scenario A is impossible.

Scenario A would make me happy, but it's going to come down to B or C. Which is to say, it comes down to whether anyone can game the new rules.With the gaming of the rules that has occurred up until now, B is the safest bet.

So here's your falsifiable prediction: If EPH is adopted, we're either going to see a Temporary Cease-Fire (followed by renewed conflict on a similar scale) or Balkanization, depending on whether or not someone can find a way to game the system. Scenario A happens if there is massive heart-change on all sides and true efforts towards rapprochement.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

"If you are boys, your God is a woman. If you are women, your God is a boy. If you are men, your God is a maiden. The God is where you are not."

-CG Jung, The Red Book

I showed you this image in the previous post:

Let's review: Individual instances of Archetypes (a particular dream, a particular character) are expressions of the Archetype, not the Archetype itself. Isis is not the Light Mother, but she is an individual expression of the Light Mother pattern. Got it? Good.

Now Jung and Campbell and all the others have their own lists of Archetypal figures: the Light Mother, the Dark Mother, the Light Father, the Dark Father, Tyrant Holdfast, the Princess of Sleep, the Old Man, and so on ad infinitum.

Unfortunately, we don't have enough time to discuss all of the different Archetypal characters identified by this scholar or that scholar. But since we're only concerned with the Damsel in Distress, we only really need to talk about one: the Anima/Animus.

The Anima/Animus represent the totality of the Unconscious, the totality of all that the Conscious mind is not. For men (according to Jung), it takes the form of the female Anima; for women it takes the form of the male Animus. As Jung says, "the God is where you are not."

This makes a certain amount of sense, even to the logical, Conscious mind. If you want a symbol for all that your Conscious mind is not, what better than the polar opposite of yourself: for the young man, a mother; for the old woman, a young man.

The journey of the hero is not to liberate the princess from the monster (or indeed, to reinforce social control over female bodies), but to liberate the soul from the forces that imprison it. It is an error to identify real-world women with the princess, for the princess is an aspect of the hero. Mario does not save Princess Peach, the Consciousness liberates the Unconsciousness from repression.

This is the basic pattern, but stories that subvert the pattern can also be psychologically compelling. For example, the Tragedy subverts the pattern by having the hero fail in his quest (usually due to some character flaw). Hamlet does not save his mother or Ophelia, and dies. MacBeth is led down the road to ruin by his wife, and dies. Oedipus slays the monster and marries a queen, only to find she is his mother.

But the pattern remains. The failure to save the princess, to rescue the soul, ends in terror, tragedy, and death. Each unhappy family may be unhappy in its own way, but the wages of sin are surprisingly constant. The pattern can be subverted, but ignoring the interests and desires of the Unconscious mind entirely results in unconvincing dreck.

The purpose of this series is not to argue that Women should be passive objects. The argument is that being a passive object is the psychological purpose of the Damsel. And while there are issues with the representation of women in media, the answer isn't to create media that fails to be psychologically satisfying.

Don't ignore the patterns. Learn from them and create something psychologically satisfying.